Another fight.
Another loss.
Back in the cell. A man enters, using a sharp razor to slice the boy’s abdomen. The boy cries, another tiny bottle is handed to him, he heals instantly. Another slice of the razor.
It’s a repetitive cycle, and with each gunshot, each slice of the razor on his skin, he’s getting older, becoming a man.
People are around him again, shouting, waving fists, and the boy, I realize, is Caz. He can’t be any older than fifteen or sixteen. He’s in the middle of the ring, fighting a guy much larger than he is.
Blood gushing, bone crunching. He wins this time, and his arm is thrown in the air by the referee, despite the blood dripping out of his mouth.
Another vision appears, the boy sitting in a pristine room, a man standing by the door. “Where is my mother?” the boy demands.
The man leaves the room, slamming the door behind him.
Another vision, Caz standing on a dark shore in front of an ocean, dressed head to toe in black. A flat black cap is on his head, and beside him is an older woman. Maeve. Behind him, Juniper, Killian, and Rowan. Ahead of him, a body wrapped in black cloth, lying on top of a wooden board. Someone lights the body on fire and Caz watches the body float aimlessly across the ocean until he can no longer see it.
“You’re safe now,” Maeve tells him, her hand on his shoulder.
He pulls away from her, leaving the grave.
More gunshots.
More screaming.
More crying.
But none of it is happeningtohim. It’s happeningbecause ofhim.
I suck in a breath, and Caz groans again and buckles, but I catch him as the purple hurricane roars harder. It’s all his inner turmoil being unleashed. All his rage, his bitterness, his pain…it’s all here, laid out in front of me.
I clasp his face in my hands, giving him my attention again. “I see now. I understand.”
“You shouldn’t have come back,” he says, looking away.
“Yes, I should have.”
He finds my eyes, stares into them, then clutches my face in his hands too, his nostrils flaring.
“I’m no good for you, Willow,” he rasps. “You can’t be with me.”
“I can,” I counter.
He shakes his head, denying it, trying to pull his face out of my hands, but I hold steady.
